Choosing the right varieties for a Wyoming climate will increase your chance of success in establishing a thriving, healthy orchard that will produce fruit for many years to come. Through trial and error, the Miller family has identified several varieties of apples that thrive on their homestead near Laramie. These include: Prairie Magic, State Fair, Haralson, Keepsake, and Sweet Sixteen. Notice that these are varieties you are not likely to find at the grocery store! Here is another list of fruit tree varieties for Wyoming.

Do you have very old trees? Get in touch with the Wyoming Apple Project and find out if you have a rare cultivar worth saving.

Spending the time to train and prune your fruit trees will help them develop a strong tree structure, improve fruit quality and quantity, and make it easier to harvest the fruit. Pruning trees when they are small is easy and fast, and you will see the benefits for many years to come.

The Basics:

The best time to prune is after the tree has become dormant for the winter, and before it blooms in the spring. Young trees are the most sensitive to cold, and should be pruned earlier in the season before sub-zero temperatures set in.

Determine what type of tree training system will work best for your trees (open center, central leader, espalier, etc).

Remove all dead, damaged, or diseased wood and sterilize tools to prevent the spread of disease between trees.

When pruning diseased wood, sanitize tools between cuts to prevent the spread of disease to other parts of the same tree, or other trees.

Prune young trees lightly, and mature trees more heavily.

Pruning in the winter will stimulate the growth of branches, while pruning the summer will generally retard growth.